Website

[Pandarian]

Mike - The ideas you have suggested are great. All is true on how to generate more traffic and make the page more interesting.

Unfortunately, what Rick has said is pretty true. This also comes in my experience of making sites for other organizations. Often times, sites like this start off well, but then tend to slow down because of the maintenance part. The hardest part of making any site is maintaining it. I can be the first to admit that I'm horrible at it. So, I've begun delegating tasks to other people to help keep the site more sustainable.

That being said, I agree to the "KISS" philosophy for the club's website. That is to keep it simple. I do agree that a lot of features will make the site cooler, but my experience has been that nobody really utilizes them in the long run. And for the effort of implementing it and the added complexity, the trade-off sometimes isn't worth it.

For the forums, a simple forum may be useful for our club for private matters; however, I'm afraid that it may not be highly utilized much like the old website. I do have a simple forum that is hidden on the website. It can be turned on and tested, but I've decided to wait a little while until we see how the site goes.

For the tank of the month/DIY articles. I definitely agree, and the website is set up for that. I would love to have tank of the month features and properly done DIY articles on the site. The current DIY wall of text posts were just copied from the old site. I didn't want to lose those articles in the transfer so it was a simple copy and past job. Future articles can look much better with videos and pictures. Somebody just has to do them.

Anyway, from your suggestions, I added a "Submit an article" page under the "Membership" tab. There, I encourage any club member to submit an article to put up on the website. As Rick mentioned, the hardest part is keeping the site maintained and up to date. Hopefully with the help of the club, the new site will be content fresh and up to date.

I hope that helps. Thanks for the suggestions. Let me know if there others.

And a general FYI, we've had over 500 page views and over 60 unique visitors in the past day. Not bad for one day's launch. :dance:

 

[ameares8]

The new site looks great! Only things that I see that you may want to add from a coding standpoint are Meta tags, XML sitemaps, and a robots.txt file. Those are not necessary obviously, but they help with the SEO. Also, if you have not already, run the site through W3C to see the errors. Here is the link, but most of the errors listed are trivial. http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://mtrc.org

 

[Pandarian]

Thanks! I'm going to try to add those. For things like that, I would greatly appreciate the help. I'm going to try to add SEO, but most of it is over my head. And I can't really tell which errors are relevant or not. I really am a newb in many things computer.

 

[ameares8]

Sure, I can add all of that stuff to the site or I can show you how to do it. Just let me know how you want to handle it.

 

[poolkeeper1]

You Guy's go as It's all over my head, So I will sit back and enjoy the results!
Thanks In Advance for any upgrades....
Bill

 

[orthokardia]

i like the online discussion link.

 

[mikemartinez]

I have read your replies and see that the reason for having the website has changed from what it initially was.

You guys DO want the website to be just a "Heads up on upcoming events" type of thing which is fine but also you can save yourself all of the trouble and just make those announcements here. Same exact thing but no hassle.

Not trying to bash or put down anything you have done cause it looks great but I dont see what out of all the info you mentioned that you guys want to be on there that cant just be simply done here.

Date meeting info? Just make a thread here.

Meeting minutes? Same.. Or this could be mass emailed to everyone to keep it exclusive to MTRC members only.

And we already have this forum so that takes care of that.

I said it before I I'll say it again... The club doesnt need to have a website just so we can say that we have one... That's a backwards way of thinking cause the time dedicated to a glorified bulletin board could be spent elsewhere.

And I'll say it again, if the website never got used before it was because people hated the way it looked and there was never any content available and no members ideas were ever implemented or even considered...

Assuming that it will never/hardly get used again is like me saying that this BOD will be just as bad as previous BOD's.. that makes no sense and I have no factual info to base that off of just as you dont... And please dont take this as me attacking cause I am not but it is what it is..

Maybe I'm mistaken but I could have swore we were paying some amount of money to have the website running, if I'm mistaken then that changes everything... If not then we need to put it to good use.

 

[ZachB]

Yea, I don't see a reason to keep the club bylaws, constitution, minutes, equipment, etc. as club only, or secret. Why not make it public. That way new members can see what they're getting into and maybe entice them with a list of equipment instead of keeping it behind closed doors. I found the club through the website before last, and it had hardly any relevant information on there. Not through ReefCentral. I see no need for a forum on the club site - I need another forum login like I need a hole in the head.

For a good simple reference site and one additional way to potentially attract new members, I think this site will serve the purpose well.

 

[poolkeeper1]

One thing that will be added is a link to other places of Info for our Members. That they already use.
Bill

 

[mikemartinez]

Yea, I don't see a reason to keep the club bylaws, constitution, minutes, equipment, etc. as club only, or secret. Why not make it public. That way new members can see what they're getting into and maybe entice them with a list of equipment instead of keeping it behind closed doors. I found the club through the website before last, and it had hardly any relevant information on there. Not through ReefCentral. I see no need for a forum on the club site - I need another forum login like I need a hole in the head.

For a good simple reference site and one additional way to potentially attract new members, I think this site will serve the purpose well.

That makes sense..

And also I understand that some of my ideas are way out there as far as what can be feasibly done and I completely understand that but I just dont think the website should just be a bulletin board... For that we might as well use that time to make a newsletter that can be mass emailed to everyone every month.

But you guys seemed to agree on the Tank of the Quarter thing so maybe in the future we can move forward on that....

The rest we will just have to agree to disagree, but like you said maybe in the future things can change depending on needs... It just feels good that positive steps are actually taking place instead of just talking about doing things that never get done. .

 

[mixer911]

I have read your replies and see that the reason for having the website has changed from what it initially was.

You guys DO want the website to be just a "Heads up on upcoming events" type of thing which is fine but also you can save yourself all of the trouble and just make those announcements here. Same exact thing but no hassle.

Not trying to bash or put down anything you have done cause it looks great but I dont see what out of all the info you mentioned that you guys want to be on there that cant just be simply done here.

Date meeting info? Just make a thread here.

Meeting minutes? Same.. Or this could be mass emailed to everyone to keep it exclusive to MTRC members only.

And we already have this forum so that takes care of that.

I said it before I I'll say it again... The club doesnt need to have a website just so we can say that we have one... That's a backwards way of thinking cause the time dedicated to a glorified bulletin board could be spent elsewhere.

And I'll say it again, if the website never got used before it was because people hated the way it looked and there was never any content available and no members ideas were ever implemented or even considered...

Assuming that it will never/hardly get used again is like me saying that this BOD will be just as bad as previous BOD's.. that makes no sense and I have no factual info to base that off of just as you dont... And please dont take this as me attacking cause I am not but it is what it is..

Maybe I'm mistaken but I could have swore we were paying some amount of money to have the website running, if I'm mistaken then that changes everything... If not then we need to put it to good use.

Mike,

I fully understand what you are saying, but we do have some club members that are banned from Reef Central. It is not fair to them or people that do not even know what reef central is to have all "Club Related Info" just on here.

 

[mikemartinez]

Mike,

I fully understand what you are saying, but we do have some club members that are banned from Reef Central. It is not fair to them or people that do not even know what reef central is to have all "Club Related Info" just on here.

They cant post but they can read what's on here.... You dont have to be logged in to read threads on RC....

Also people who dont know about RC is even more the reason why the website needs to have interesting content on it to keep those people interested and coming back for more info.

 

[ZachB]

They cant post but they can read what's on here.... You dont have to be logged in to read threads on RC....

Also people who dont know about RC is even more the reason why the website needs to have interesting content on it to keep those people interested and coming back for more info.

They will easily be able to find reef central now that there is a link on the website directing them here. If they don't know about it now they will.

 

[zef004]

Mike if your banned your banned from looking and posting. RC ban IP address too with said name.

 

[mikemartinez]

Mike if your banned your banned from looking and posting. RC ban IP address too with said name.

Are you sure that's from just reading as well? Because typically it's just from posting... That's the reason they can see everyones IP address so when they see a new account created under a certain IP address they can automatically ban it...

 

[zef004]

Yeap. You just a message saying your account been ban for life. Ask toxic69 he just got banned and can't read any post or post.

 

[ZachB]

Proxies work wonders.

 

[zef004]

Here's what a Club member sent me when he got banned.

 

[Jennifier615]

Why did he get banned or are we not allowed to ask?

 

[zef004]

Something about bad mouthing RC. That he can't send or receive pm. That's what he told me. I know there 5-10 members or use to be members that got banned.